Food & Wine

Just when you thought the pork barrelling was over…

Fed up with all the federal and state political pork barrelling and porkies? The people of Australia can now be rewarded with Australian PorkFest – Get some real “Pork on Your Fork!”.

The celebration of Australian PorkFest, for the whole month of April is to showcase the versatility and appeal of Australian pork. Julie Goodwin, Australia’s first Masterchef, has been declared PorkFest Ambassador.

Australian Pork Limited (APL) CEO Andrew Spencer said, “Australia’s pork farmers are very proud to be represented by such a passionate culinary icon. Julie is a busy, caring wife and mother who proved to a nation she can cook up a storm. Her unassuming talent and warmth epitomises the heartbeat of the ideal family kitchen”.

“She loves cooking. She loves her cooking to please and she loves cooking with pork. What’s not to love? Julie Goodwin doing her bit for Australia’s pork farmers with her down-to-earth appeal to home cooks is a perfect fit”.

April is a time when pork is at its most plentiful, at its peak quality, and is most economical. This boom of delicious pork is due to the fact that most of Australian pig herds breed and grow best in the cooler months, meaning that piglet batches born at the end of winter catch up in size with litters born at the beginning of the colder months. Consequently, more pigs come onto the market at that particular time of the year. It’s when pork is in ‘peak season’.

With supermarkets, hundreds of restaurants and over 1,300 butchers around the country on board for PorkFest, it’s easy to get into the ‘pork on your fork’ spirit. Shoppers can simply follow Julie’s featured PorkFest recipe each week – roast loin, pad Thai, cannelloni, and schnitzel, or they can be adventurous with any of the abundance of other cuts available with pork, be it leg, steak, cutlet, scotch, shoulder, belly, fillet, trotter, or hock. Pork is a perfect fit for almost any cuisine style, so imagination is the only limit and PorkFest is all about getting the creative juices flowing and getting out of a recipe rut.

Holy Grail Restaurant and Bar, La Scala, The Mawson Club, and The Royal Canberra Golf Club are right behind PorkFest as is leading pub group ALH, with 234 of its hotels expected to serve about 30,000 portions of pork cutlets by the end of April.

Local butchers Balzanelli Smallgoods in Fyshwick, Lachlan Valley in Griffith and Kippax Quality Meats in Holt among many others are also flying the PorkFest Flag this month.

A complete list of your local restaurants and butchers participating in PorkFest, as well as Julie Goodwin’s recipes can be found at pork.com.au

Do you know what it’s like to be happy as a pig in mud? Well the majority of pigs in Australia don’t. Most pigs will never set foot in the outdoors. They can’t root in the dirt, wallow in the mud or forage for food. In conventional pig farming pigs are often subjected to painful husbandry procedures like tail tocking, surgical castration and teeth clipping without anaesthetic. But the biggest welfare problem facing Australian pigs is intensive confinement in sow stalls and farrowing crates.

All the people who love pork should go to the Salvos store in Mitchell. I found a cache of aprons from PorkFest. Some have embroidered piggies with all the special bits marked, and some say PorkFest (I was told, I didn’t ask them to open that design). I’ll now be frying tofu wearing a pork apron, which was just $2. The aprons are really long, and black, and new (do not smell of pork).

Because Australia’s pork industry continues to face huge challenges from the massive amounts of frozen pork landing in Australia from highly subsidised agricultural countries like Denmark, Canada and the United States.
Every week, around $10 million or 2.6 thousand tonnes of cheap imported pork floods into Australia to be made into ham or bacon.
This imported pork does not have to meet the stringent production methods and animal welfare standards as Australian grown pork.

All the people who love pork should go to the Salvos store in Mitchell. I found a cache of aprons from PorkFest. Some have embroidered piggies with all the special bits marked, and some say PorkFest (I was told, I didn’t ask them to open that design). I’ll now be frying tofu wearing a pork apron, which was just $2. The aprons are really long, and black, and new (do not smell of pork).

I’ve never understood the concept of fried tofu. Why take a healthy food and make it unhealthy?
Deep fried mars bar makes a heck of a lot more sense.

No, a little oil (vegetable oil) won’t make tofu so unhealthy will it? It needs something to add flavour and you can fry it with other things which have some of that. I have never had a deep fried Mars bar so I can’t comment on their philosophical qualities.

Because Australia’s pork industry continues to face huge challenges from the massive amounts of frozen pork landing in Australia from highly subsidised agricultural countries like Denmark, Canada and the United States.
Every week, around $10 million or 2.6 thousand tonnes of cheap imported pork floods into Australia to be made into ham or bacon.
This imported pork does not have to meet the stringent production methods and animal welfare standards as Australian grown pork.

Because Australia’s pork industry continues to face huge challenges from the massive amounts of frozen pork landing in Australia from highly subsidised agricultural countries like Denmark, Canada and the United States.
Every week, around $10 million or 2.6 thousand tonnes of cheap imported pork floods into Australia to be made into ham or bacon.
This imported pork does not have to meet the stringent production methods and animal welfare standards as Australian grown pork.